Hong Kong set to close all schools

hong kong — Hong Kong will close all schools after a spike in locally transmitted coronavirus infections, the city’s education minister said on Friday.

Schools will close from Monday, bringing forward the start of the summer holidays, Kevin Yeung said, after the city recorded an “exponential growth” of locally transmitted cases in the past few days. The finance hub recorded 38 new confirmed cases on Friday, 32 of which were locally transmitted.

The spike marks a setback for the city, where daily lives were returning to normal with restaurants and bars resuming normal business and cultural attractions reopening.

Despite being right next to mainland China where the outbreak emerged in late 2019, the city had largely managed to quash local transmissions in recent months.

But new infection clusters started to emerge since Tuesday, including at an elderly care home that reported at least 32 cases and a housing estate that reported 11 cases.

At least 21 new infections in the last five days have been classified as unknown in origin, meaning authorities are struggling to work out how the disease is spreading. —